I think that's just semantics. Most people still feel like they're in a recession, and still live like they're in one.

As for Social Security disability I'm sure that's been abused for years. I don't know what Obama has done to make it easier for people to get on it, I don't know anything about it. I do know of someone who got it years ago, I believe during the GWB administration, because of her post divorce issues and being afraid to drive on a highway. So my guess is that you might be able to get certain doctors of psychology to provide the required "proof", if you're so inclined. I don't even know what the requirements are.

Just as with anything else, I think the govt should crack down on abuses of that.

congratulations for having him on your ignore list? i don't see how this contributes to the discussion at all. but you missed the point anyway and don't seem to even want to have a discussion and would rather just point the finger at obama. if you don't see how bush's actions affected obama's presidency and how clinton's actions affected bush's presidency, etc., then i don't know what to tell you. the problems that existed on 1/19/08 existed the next day and didn't crop up overnight. thus, they can't go away overnight either.

So it's okay to blame past administrations when the current one fails? Okay then, i will remember that when Romney gets elected and you guys are having a go at him. Until then, lets try and remember who is running here; Obama and Romney (not Bush).

Obama ran on HOPE & CHANGE. He won with 70 MILLION VOTES. So the public must have felt very confident that he was going to fix everything. I suspect he knew that in this interview:

As you can see in the second part of that video, Mr. Obama himself seems to realize it's not working out as planned. Suddenly he's not going to fix everything overnight, next week. So what Changed? Did people just give up Hope? Or did Mr. Obama get to Washington and realize that things are really different than they seem?

If the 2006 mid terms were seen as a referendum on Bush and the Iraq war, then its fair to say that the 2010 mid terms were a referendum on Obama and Obama-care. In 2008 McCain lost big even as polls had him close to Obama at times, even leading at one point.

I don't personally think Mr. Obama is a bad guy, just someone who's in over his head. I still find it quite odd that a guy goes from a community organizer to a senator to President. That's kind of like saying because i once sat in a flight simulator, so now im ready to fly to the moon.

But hey.. we've got this big messy tough democracy thing here...and that's the great thing about America is...because we have all this contentious ideas that are out there..

This sums up a big portion of the electorate. And that's true for all sides actually. I would say that the majority of people in this country vote very short sighted.

Some vote because of their own wallet.

Some vote because of color of skin.

Some vote because of their religion.

Some vote because they've been taught to hate the other person.

None of these are reasons to vote.

All of these reasons throw out all logic, are short sighted, and won't help the big picture. We're a very short sighted, short attention span, immediate satisfaction type of society; and this is the reason that our elected officials campaign and for the most part preside with very immediate thinking and actions.

We have to start thinking long term or this will just continue.

Any policy that will result in an overnight rebound will more than likely fail us in the longterm. Long term thinking and policy might hurt in the short term. We've seen this time and time again, and for those of us not paying attention to these cycles you're damning us to repeat them all over again.

By no means has Obama been perfect, there is a lot I've disagreed with regarding his presidency, but one thing I do like about him is that he has done some things that are long term thinking regarding energy, healthcare, and economically speaking that haven't won him many immediate points with people. It's been awhile since we've seen that. I don't see Romney, or really any Republican currently that has any real long term ideas, in fact some have some very regressive ideas.

Listen, everyone knows certain things need to be fixed. For example: everyone knows that our safety nets are being abused(you're a fool to think that anyone is blind to this or that this is what anyone wants) but you're being short sighted and ignorant to think removing or cutting the safety net will solve anything. It will make the issue worse. You fix the bigger problem before you fix the safety net. This is just common sense, a common sense that is becoming foreign to a big portion of the electorate.

So it's okay to blame past administrations when the current one fails? Okay then, i will remember that when Romney gets elected and you guys are having a go at him. Until then, lets try and remember who is running here; Obama and Romney (not Bush).

Obama ran on HOPE & CHANGE. He won with 70 MILLION VOTES. So the public must have felt very confident that he was going to fix everything. I suspect he knew that in this interview:

I ask you, as a rational person, what opposition politician runs on a platform of "Let's Have More of the Same!" Every campaign operates under some form of "hope & change" narrative.

And I don't think any politician promises to fix everything. If voters thought Obama was going to do that, it's their fault for projecting impossible expectations on him. On election night, he also tried to dampen those expectations by cautioning people that change wouldn't happen in one term, but two.

I ask you, as a rational person, what opposition politician runs on a platform of "Let's Have More of the Same!" Every campaign operates under some form of "hope & change" narrative.

And I don't think any politician promises to fix everything. If voters thought Obama was going to do that, it's their fault for projecting impossible expectations on him.

It shocks me that this is so oblivious to so many.

Why has "hope and change" become such a phrase to harp on? And they started it during his campaign. It's baffling.

Like you said, EVERY politician runs on a similiar message. When I see people fall in line and start harping on this I can't help but wonder when they checked out, when did they place the blinders on in their life?

You have terrible heuristics. I assume starting a giant financial crisis was a great George W. Bush policy because it made gas prices crash? Maybe Obama should do it?

Also hope you don't complain about Mid East policy. Guess what motivates American bad ideas overseas? Keeping gas prices low...

Never fear, home prices are at their lowest since 2002, unemployment numbers are still high at 8.2% with only 120k jobs created last month, and there's the matter of Obama's $5 TRILLION in debt. I will give you this much, gas prices have gone down a bit over the last few days, which is possibly because of bad economic news. So there's that...

And as for the middle east policy, whats not to love? We currently have wonderful peace and prosperity in all corners of the world especially in the middle east. Nobody wants nukes, nobody's firing any shots, no protests or uprisings, everyone loves their borders and is quite happy with everyone else's' religion, etc.

Obama didnt lose a drone in Iran and secretly tell Israel to wait until after the election to strike Iran

Obama insisted that any attack on Iran should be postponed until after the US presidential elections in November, possibly even until next spring. The source revealed that Netanyahu consented to delaying a strike, but wished to know until when. “The question is how much time,” he reportedly said

AFP - An Iranian military commander on Sunday said the Islamic republic is building a copy of a US spy drone captured in December 2011 and revealed what he said were "codes" gleaned from the unmanned aircraft.

"I am giving you four codes so the Americans understand just how far we have gone in penetrating the drone's secrets," General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Revolutionary Guards' aerospatial division, told state television.

I ask you, as a rational person, what opposition politician runs on a platform of "Let's Have More of the Same!" Every campaign operates under some form of "hope & change" narrative.

And I don't think any politician promises to fix everything. If voters thought Obama was going to do that, it's their fault for projecting impossible expectations on him. On election night, he also tried to dampen those expectations by cautioning people that change wouldn't happen in one term, but two.

We'll see what happens.

Hey Bo, clearly in the video I've posted you can see Mr. Obama saying that if change didn't happen in 3 years that we would be looking at a one term proposition.

And then on the other hand, you have actors such as Matt Damon who are bashing this president for selling out to the establishment to get re-elected.

Call it President Obama’s Committee for the Re-Election of the President — a political slush fund at the Health and Human Services Department.

Only this isn’t some little fund from shadowy private sources; this is taxpayer money, redirected to help Obama win another term. A massive amount of it, too — $8.3 billion. Yes, that’s billion, with a B.

Here is how it works.

The most oppressive aspects of the ObamaCare law don’t kick in until after the 2012 election, when the president will no longer be answerable to voters. More “flexibility,” he recently explained to the Russians.

Postponing the pain: The administration is temporarily restoring funds to Medicare Advantage so seniors don’t lose coverage before the election.
But certain voters would surely notice one highly painful part of the law before then — namely, the way it guts the popular Medicare Advantage program.

For years, 12 million seniors have relied on these policies, a more market-oriented alternative to traditional Medicare, without the aggravating gaps in coverage.

But as part of its hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts, the Obama one-size-fits-all plan slashes reimbursement rates for Medicare Advantage starting next year — herding many seniors back into the government-run program.

Under federal “open-enrollment” guidelines, seniors must pick their Medicare coverage program for next year by the end of this year — which means they should be finding out before Election Day.

Nothing is more politically volatile than monkeying with the health insurance of seniors, who aren’t too keen on confusing upheavals in their health care and are the most diligent voters in the land. This could make the Tea Party look like a tea party.

Making matters even more politically dangerous for Obama is that open enrollment begins Oct. 15, less than three weeks before voters go to the polls.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger electoral disaster for a president than seniors in crucial states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio discovering that he’s taken away their beloved Medicare Advantage just weeks before an election.

This political ticking time bomb could become the biggest “October Surprise” in US political history.

But the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year, getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama’s re-election bid.

The money is to come from funds that Health and Human Services is allowed to use for “demonstration projects.” But to make it legal, HHS has to pretend that it’s doing an “experiment” to study the effect of this money on the insurance market.

That is, to “study” what happens when the government doesn’t change anything but merely continues a program that’s been going on for years.

Obama can temporarily prop up Medicare Advantage long enough to get re-elected by exploiting an obscure bit of federal law. Under a 1967 statute, the HHS secretary can spend money without specific approval by Congress on “experiments” directly aimed at “increasing the efficiency and economy of health services.”

Past demonstration projects have studied new medical techniques or strategies aimed at improving care or reducing costs. The point is to find ways to lower the costs of Medicare by allowing medical technocrats to make efficient decisions without interference from vested interests.

Now Obama means to turn it on its head — diverting the money to a blatantly nonexperimental purpose to serve his political needs.

A Government Accounting Office report released this morning shows, quite starkly, that there simply is no experiment being conducted, just money being spent. Understandably, the GAO recommends that HHS cancel the project.

Congress should immediately launch an investigation into this unprecedented misuse of taxpayer money and violation of the public trust, which certainly presses the boundaries of legality and very well may breach them.
If he’s not stopped, Obama will spend $8 billion in taxpayer funds for a scheme to mask the debilitating effects on seniors of his signature piece of legislation just long enough to get himself re-elected.

Now that is some serious audacity.

Benjamin E. Sasse, a former US assistant secretary of health, is president of Midland University. Charles Hurt covers politics in DC.

Why? I have no idea how the President would be at fault? Does he fly the things? Also, you could argue that his influence in relation to this was a positive. Obama is known as Drone Fan # 1. You could argue its situations like this that highlight their value. Shit like this happens from time to time, but now, there's not the added issue of a US pilot or two in a prison in Tehran. So, thumbs up?

So it's okay to blame past administrations when the current one fails? Okay then, i will remember that when Romney gets elected and you guys are having a go at him. Until then, lets try and remember who is running here; Obama and Romney (not Bush).

don't worry, i'll still continue to blame Bush and the Republican congress. the reason we have $5T in debt is because we have a revenue problem, not a spending problem, thanks to the Bush tax cuts. of course, his endless wars and prescription drug handout didn't help things. it shocks me to see people blame Obama for Bush's debt.

however, i fully expect Romney to pick up where Bush left off. cut food inspectors. cut Social Security. cut Medicare. cut Medicaid. cut education. cut the FBI. cut food assistance for poor mothers. cut veteran's health care. keep and expand tax cuts for millionaires. keep deductions for yachts, planes, vacation homes. keep loopholes that let GE pay no tax last year. and increase defense spending so we're left even further in debt and dealing with wider income inequality and a war in Iran.